Inside the very big, very controversial business of dog cloning

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Recently born clones share an incubator.

Barbra Streisand is not alone. At a South Korean laboratory, a once-disgraced doctor is replicating hundreds of deceased pets for the rich and famous. It’s made for more than a few questions of bioethics.

The surgeon is a showman. Scrubbed in and surrounded by his surgical team, a lavalier mike clipped to his mask, he gestures broadly as he describes the C-section he is about to perform to a handful of rapt students watching from behind a plexiglass wall. Still narrating, he steps over to a steel operating table where the expectant mother is stretched out, fully anesthetized. All but her lower stomach is discreetly covered by a crisp green cloth. The surgeon makes a quick incision in her belly. His assistants tug gingerly on clamps that pull back the flaps of tissue on either side of the cut. The surgeon slips two gloved fingers inside the widening hole, then his entire hand. An EKG monitor shows the mother’s heart beating in steady pulses.

Continue reading… “Inside the very big, very controversial business of dog cloning”

Gene editing technique allows silkworms to produce spider silk

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An analysis of transformed cocoons. Morphology of the WT-1, FibH+/-, FibH-/-, WT-2, MaSp1+/-, and MaSp1+/+ cocoons. Scale bar represents 1 cm. Credit: Jun Xu

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has succeeded in using a gene editing technique to get silkworms to produce spider silk. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes the technique they used and the quality of the silk produced.

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Designer babies on horizon as ethics council gives green light to genetically edited embryos

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Designer babies are on the horizon after an influential group of scientists concluded that it could be ‘morally permissible’ to genetically engineer human embryos.

In a new report which opens the door to a change in the law, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, said that DNA editing could become an option for parents wanting to ‘influence the genetic characteristics of their child.’

Although it would be largely used to cure devastating genetic illnesses, or predispositions to cancers and dementia, the experts said they were not ruling out cosmetic uses such as making tweaks to increase height or changing eye or hair colour, if it would make a child more successful.

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Decoding your baby’s DNA: It can be done. But should it be?

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Maverick Coltrin was diagnosed with pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy shortly after he was born. He now gets checkups to make sure his seizures are under control and that he’s still healthy. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

Maverick Coltrin entered the world a seemingly healthy 8-pound boy. But within a week, he was having seizures that doctors could neither explain nor control. They warned that he would probably die within a few months.

“I remember my world just came crashing down,” said his mother, Kara Coltrin, 24.

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Malware encoded into strand of DNA by biohackers

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When biologists synthesize  DNA, they take pains not to create or spread a dangerous stretch of genetic code that could be used to create a toxin or, worse, an infectious disease. But one group of biohackers has demonstrated how DNA can carry a less expected threat—one designed to infect not humans nor animals but computers.

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Mosquito wars – introducing one million non-biting sterile male mosquitoes weekly into the wild

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Last October, we announced the Debug Project, an initiative at Verily to reduce the devastating global health impact that disease-carrying mosquitoes inflict on people around the world. Today, I’m happy to announce the launch of Debug Fresno, our first field study in the U.S. to test a potential mosquito control method using sterile insect technique in collaboration with MosquitoMate and Fresno County’s Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District (CMAD).

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Microsoft hopes to ‘solve’ cancer within 10 years by ‘reprogramming’ diseased cells

 Microsoft has vowed to “solve the problem of cancer” within a decade by using ground-breaking computer science to crack the code of diseased cells so they can be reprogrammed back to a healthy state.

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Three-parent baby technique produces world’s first baby

 

The world’s first three-parent baby has been born.

Scientists revealed the birth of a baby boy, now five months old, usingDNA from three parents.

Fertility experts hailed the breakthrough as “great news and a huge deal” for the future of reproduction.

But they expressed concern that it was only achieved because US scientists crossed the border to Mexico to take advantage of lax regulation.

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Google’s Ray Kurzweil: The Business Of Extending Human Life Going Into “High Gear”

The futurist says that we’re getting closer and closer to “reprogramming” the human body.

Over the last many centuries, human life expectancy has very gradually lengthened with improved health and medical technologies and research. In the next 20 years, we can expect our expected life spans to be extended at a far more rapid pace than in the past.

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Discover the Hidden Patterns of Tomorrow with Futurist Thomas Frey
Unlock Your Potential, Ignite Your Success.

By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.

Learn More about this exciting program.